


Give of Yourself

by Frost_and_Light



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Sacrifice, Season 8, finale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-16
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 00:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/805193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frost_and_Light/pseuds/Frost_and_Light
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As angels fall to the Earth in a rain of fire, Sam realizes that he's the only one who can begin the retaliation against Metatron's heaven--but he is faced by a decision he swore he would never make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place directly after the season 8 finale. Contains spoilers.

Sam had been delirious with blood loss and aching from the trials. He had been so close. So painfully close. But he had gotten the universe's attention, set himself up to fight evil, and then he had seen that look on Dean's face.  
Saving people was important. Hell, it was his whole identity. It was what made it worth it for him to get up in the morning—he'd certainly learned that since Dean had escaped purgatory. But Dean was right—the tablets couldn't be trusted, and now they had real tools. They could spread information. Together, they could put hunters on level footing with the things that went bump in the night.  
Still, getting that close and then turning his back on the trials had some serious whiplash on the hunter's body and soul. He was being torn apart, and his attempts at cleansing himself were rapidly undoing themselves. He worried that there was nothing he could do to save himself, that he would die without completing the trials or staying to help Dean. It didn't help that, when he looked up with tear-muddied eyes, he saw the meteor-shower of angels, crashing to earth like a biblical rain of fire.  
Which, even in his hazy state, Sam realized was a very bad sign.

......

“Dean,” Sam groaned as they sped down the highway, looking for a sign that would point them to a hospital.  
“Sammy, don't talk. You'll be okay. Just hang on for another second, will you?” Dean's voice held the tell-tale signs of masked panic when he was trying to be strong for his little brother.  
“No, Dean. I need you to tell me something,” Sam insisted, coughing and swallowing the blood that came up to hide it from his brother. He was dying, yeah, but there were questions that needed asking and they were far more important than one life.  
Dean sighed, the sound coming out as a sharp hiss from between his teeth. “Fine. What,” he asked simply.  
“When Zachariah...sent you to the future.” Sam took a moment to breath deeply, wincing at the movement it caused in his lungs, but needing the strength. “What happened? How was it different from now?” Sam managed to ask. “Tell me everything.”  
Dean frowned in the direction of his little brother, removing his eyes from the road for a dangerously long time. “Okay, uh...Croatoan was all over the place. I was still alive. Chuck was there. Cas was human, and the angels had left heaven. Crowley wasn't there, obviously, since it was Lucifer in charge of Hell. And he was...” Dean's face sharpened into a dark, deep frown.  
The Impala pulled off to the side of the road.  
“D—” Sam coughed, then tried again. “Dean?”  
“He was you. Lucifer was you. The sky rained fire, the angels left, Cas was human, and Lucifer was dressed as you for Halloween,” he said. “Sam, if you're thinking what I think you are, you gotta drop that checklist. This is not going down,” his brother demanded.  
But Sam had stopped listening. He knew how these things worked. They had never managed to change the past. How could they change the future? No. Sam had refused his chance to close heaven, and was dying because of it. He had already doomed thousands of people to death by leaving Hell open, and now thousands more might be lost because of Heaven. And yet, no one was left who had the strength to fight heaven.  
Sam swung open his door and fell out of the Impala.  
“Sam? Sammy!” Dean called, jumping out of his side of the car.  
Sam braced himself against the side of the car, sliding to the trunk, which he pulled open with no small amount of effort, then leaned into so Dean couldn't close it. His brother tried to pull him away, tried to sit him down and get him in control, but Sam was moving now. He had purpose. He reached into the very back corner of the trunk, in a tiny velveteen bag hidden under mountains of books and blades and the accoutrements of the hunters' lifestyle. Three out of four rings. It was time to pray for a long-shot.

.......

Sam's head felt surprisingly clear when he died. His soul, unlike his battered body, was not sunken or crusted with hours' worth of blood. He was glad to have this sharpened focus, because what he was about to do would require every bit of intelligence and luck he had.  
The reaper appeared quickly, a heavy-set East Asian woman dressed in a suit and with her long hair pulled back. “I'm sorry to tell you this, but y—Sam Winchester?” Sam had never seen her before, but he was used to being famous among the supernatural now.  
“You're a reaper, right? I need to speak with Death. It has to do with this,” he said, waving his arms at the falling angels still lighting the sky above him.  
“We don't usually...I can't,” the woman struggled.  
“Sam,” Death said curtly. Sam spun. Here came the hard part.

.....

Death was not a fan of Lucifer. Death was not a very big fan of the Winchesters either, to be honest. But what Sam had banked on was the assumption that Death hated the hubris of angels most of all.  
He didn't think that was the only reason the horseman of the apocalypse had given over his ring so easily. There had been something searching in his gaze as he had appraised Sam. The hunter had the distinct feeling that Death, who had saved Sam's ass on several occasions, had been preserving him for something the mortal couldn't see. Some happy future the younger Winchester boy hoped he was on the road toward.  
So with the four rings, Sam—or rather his spirit, ejected from his battered flesh—began to chant Enochian, voice trembling with the weight of destiny upon it. “Lucifer,” he said when he had finished and when the wailing chasm opened in the ground.  
“Sammy!” Dean called, looking around for his brother, whose soul he couldn't see.  
Sam knew that face. He was terrified. He was angry. Even Dean might not forgive him for what he was about to do. But Sam had been spared, over and over, for some monumental fate. He was meant to do something. His anxiety, his wrongness...they had driven him to a moment where he could make the choice no one else would be crazy enough to make.  
All the pieces were sliding into place now. He needed only one more to complete the picture.  
“Lucifer,” he yelled more loudly. “I'm going to make a deal with you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm back with another quick little chapter. Apparently this is going to be multi-chapter. I just need to wait for my imagination to kick in so I can figure out where it's going. Enjoy, and please let me know how you think I can improve.
> 
> **edited slightly since posting, just because I need Sam (and you guys) to be properly pissed

Lucifer communicated with Sam Winchester using his true voice. The noise shook through Sam, and he felt as though it was deafening, even though his soul had no solid eardrums to receive sound. The noise shook through his very being in an exaggerated imitation of speech. Yet, as a true vessel to an archangel, Sam found that he understood.  
“No,” Sam replied to the devil's question. “This is almost the last thing I want. But this angel, Metatron, has forced the other angels out of heaven. I think...their wings are burned off. We can't reach Cas, and I think he's become human. So...I need you to promise me something,” he insisted.  
The angel waited patiently.  
“I need...I need you to not kill Dean. I need you to leave the world intact. I...I can be your vessel, but only if the only thing you do is rebel against heaven,” Sam said. He had no body, and therefore no adrenaline, but he was shaking with anxiety regardless.  
The angel promised.  
“Fine, then I need you to bring me back to life, if you can,” the hunter informed him.  
Almost before he'd finished speaking, Sam found himself gasping for air. He lurched upright, gripping his chest where the pain of the incomplete trials had nestled until they'd killed him. But the pain was gone now, and his skin crackled with frost and static.  
A whine that overpowered even the falling sky reminded him of his duty.  
“Sam,” Dean demanded. “Sammy!”  
His older brother rushed over, reaching arms around Sam to support him, his eyes searching frantically to be certain the younger Winchester boy was alright. “I know times are kind of crazy right now, Sam, but getting Lucifer to resurrect you? The devil? Being in his debt is just one more fucking thing we really don't need on our plates,” he told Sam sternly.  
And Sam felt the pain return in his chest, strangling him so that it threatened to erase him from the Earth. The only difference was that it wasn't the pain of the trials killing him, but the knowledge that to undo everything he'd done, to keep his brother and the rest of his patchwork family safe, and to make his life worth anything...he'd have to betray Dean's trust completely.  
“I'm sorry, Dean,” he whispered. Sam Winchester then turned his head to face the gaping maw that led to Hell, and spoke the simple word “yes.”

.......

Unlike the last time, Lucifer didn't take time to revel in Sam's flesh. He didn't await some dramatic meeting between himself and his enemy, like generals meeting on the field. He didn't carefully demonstrate to Sam how important his vessel's happiness was to him. None of these actions were necessary now. He was not achieving some great triumph. He was not correcting the error of his beloved brother's actions. He was not contradicting Sam Winchester's wishes.  
What Lucifer was going to do now was delivering his wrath upon an arrogant usurper of heaven.  
The irony as not lost on Sam.  
The only matter of business to attend to first was the one staring the archangel in the face.  
“Give. My. Brother. Back,” Dean demanded, stepping forward as a ball of mortal aggression.  
 _Don't hurt him, Lucifer_ Sam insisted. _Don't even touch him or the deal's off._  
 _There's no refunds on destiny, Sam_ the angel replied simply. “Sorry Dean, I'm afraid that's not on the table,” Lucifer said to the older Winchester, Sam's voice speaking another's words. “Sammy and I have come to an understanding.  
If Sam could cringe, he would have done so at the sound of the devil using Dean's nickname for him. As it stood, he remained silent, hoping to avoid pissing Lucifer off and making him violent.  
 _Oh Sam,_ the angel said remorsefully, _you'll come to know me better than that._  
“Your brother can hear you, Dean,” Lucifer told the hunter with an uncharacteristic amount of gravity in his tone. “If you'd like to say goodbye to him, I'd like to let you say it now.”  
“This isn't goodbye, Sammy,” Dean shouted. “Do you hear me? I'm going to rip that son of a bitch out of you, no matter what.”  
The devil sighed. “Goodbye, Dean.”

.....

 

 _What are you going to do?_ Sam asked as Lucifer regarded the sky, his eyes intently tracing the paths of his falling brothers and sisters. Truthfully, he wanted to ask the devil how this was so different from the apocalypse he had nearly created. It seemed to the hunter that Lucifer's rage at this sight was nothing more than arrogance—he was a greedy child wanting the victor to be no one by himself.  
“I'm going to return to heaven, and I'm going to punish Metatron for his hubris,” the devil said, his tone deeply unsettling to his vessel. He had an intensity and impatience about him made even more unnerving by his use of Sam's voice.  
 _Right,_ Sam said once he had gathered his thoughts. _But how? I mean, I don't get how heaven works, but it can't be as easy as strolling in, right? And Metatron must be wielding some kind of weapon if a freaking secretary could cast out all the angels._  
“Are you trying to talk me out of our deal,” the devil asked distractedly, still watching the sky though the rain of fire and the plummeting bodies were becoming far less frequent.  
 _No. Do it. I just want to know that I didn't give everything up for nothing,_ Sam replied.  
“I can promise you it wasn't for nothing,” Lucifer stated.  
Sam was, of course, possibly more sceptical than any other human had ever been. But he did honestly believe that the his opinion really mattered to the archangel, and that was were he could find the power—if it could be found anywhere—to steer this monumentally stupid choice in the right direction.  
 _Fine,_ he replied simply. _Let's...break into heaven._

......

The one good thing had been that there were no angels around to stop them from simply strolling into heaven. Sam had hoped—naively, he knew—that they would encounter no resistance at all. Because why would Metatron expect anyone to be able to reach him?  
But the lack of angels hadn't meant that the there were no roadblocks.  
Sam had been horrified to discover, as Lucifer took them through a heaven that resembled a calm lake lit by a full moon and dazzling stars, what the first of Metatron's weapons was.  
The first sign was a break in the silence—a rustling of leaves, then the cracking of dried branches underfoot. A man leapt out of the woods surrounding the lake and grabbed Sam's body in a bear hug, trying to keep him immobile. Lucifer shrugged him off easily, disgust and surprise registering for a brief moment across his borrowed face.  
Another man came out of the woods, then a woman, then a group of three. The trickle of dead humans became a flood, crowding around Lucifer and impeding his movement.  
“Little brother, this is no barricade to me. You only make your fate worse by sending these things to face me.”  
Truthfully, it was a terrible barrier to use against the former king of Hell.  
 _Lucifer,_ Sam began.  
 _Sam, don't tell me to spare them. They're souls. Indestructible. You don't have to demand mercy for them._  
 _No,_ Sam growled. He knew the souls would be fine. He knew first hand how hardy such things were, and exactly how to scar them. But this use of them—this ripping away of the saved from hard-earned paradises for selfish purposes—simply to spare the traitorous angel his own pain was something Sam couldn't abide. The last straw--the thing that betrayed just how out-of-touch Metatron had allowed himself to become from the world--was when Lucifer's arm was caught by the strong, weathered hand of Bobby Singer. As much as Sam really and truly hated Lucifer, he had to admit to himself that their current arrangement was perfect, because Sam needed the archangel's strength to visit his own wrath on heaven. _I know what they can take. Just push through. I need you to make that bastard suffer._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Headcanons about the finale? I need all the constructive feedback I can get.

**Author's Note:**

> Shortest thing I've ever written...but if anyone wants me to make this multi-chapter, please let me know. And any prompts to do so would be helpful...I'm at a loss for how to spin Sammy and Lucifer in this situation.


End file.
